Self Doubt – And What My Friend Krish Taught Me

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Self doubt –  we’ve all experienced it. That little voice in our head that questions whether we are ready, or if we are good enough, or if we fit in.

Self doubt is the egos way of maintaining the status quo that is your current life. The ego does not want change, so when you consider something out of character, it throws out emotional warnings in the form of negative self talk, doubt and even fear. The less confident you are around the thing you are considering, the stronger the internal warnings from your ego.

This is a good thing if you are attempting something that may cause harm to your person. The ego is meant to protect the self as it knows it, so if you are about to jump off a cliff on a dare, a strong dose of self doubt and fear might be a good thing. But if you are following a path that you are passionate about and need to stretch your personal boundaries in order to grow, self doubt sucks.

This is a lesson that an interaction with my friend Krish taught me.

I met Krish online through a Facebook group. He lives in England and I’m in Canada. When he mentioned in the group that he was travelling to Vancouver Island for a holiday, I cheekily suggested that if he got to my city, we should meet for coffee, and he cheekily agreed. We found ourselves to be like minded souls and hit it off right away spending the next couple of hours in deep conversation.

Several months after our face to face meeting, we decided to connect via Skype for a chat and I offered to do a reading for him. This is where the lesson on self doubt starts.

Before I do a full reading, I contact the querents spirit guides and ask for guidance and if they have any messages for the them. I usually get random images in my minds eye. Sometimes they are symbolic and sometimes they are realistic. Along with the images, I will get a feeling or a knowing. Kinda of like a little download of the meaning of what I am seeing.  It is at this point that my ego kicks into gear and starts up with the negative self talk and questions what I am seeing.

If my ego is working at full strength, I may doubt what I saw in my minds eye and filter out what I tell the querent during the reading.  Who do I think I am after all? They won’t want to hear about that. That won’t make sense to them anyway and I will just look stupid to them. That’s how good my ego is at the self doubt game.

So I omitted to tell him of a vision I saw. It was of a building that I intuited to be an office building, shaded in black and shrouded by dark, ominous clouds. I sensed an oppressive energy around the image. My self doubt told me that Krish didn’t need to hear about this doom and gloom negative image.

Instead, I told him about an other image I got. About the plane flying over water to a tropical place. He confirmed that his was taking his mother to the Seychelles islands on holidays later that year. But it was, later in the reading, when Krish mentioned that when he returned from his trip to Canada, and his business partner sat him down and told him that their business was experiencing financial trouble, I knew my self doubt had steered me wrong.

Self doubt is you saying “no” to yourself. It is other people’s job to say no to you, not yours.

I didn’t tell him about the dark building image. How could I? My ego was having a field day over this. How could I tell him after the fact? How credible would I be? “Oh yeah, I saw the business trouble but decided not to tell you cause I didn’t want you to get worried about your business.” So instead I mentally kicked myself for letting self doubt rule over me and left it at that.

But I got a valuable lessons from that experience. I missed a potential opportunity to help my friend but more importantly, I missed an opportunity to grow in confidence as an intuitive reader; an untraditional path that I am passionate about. My ego wanted to play safe and play small, and I let it.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. My friend Krish once again was holidaying on the island and once again, we met for coffee. I decided to tell him the truth of what I saw and that my self doubt stopped me from telling him. I described the image of the building to him and explained that it looked like an office building but not like a traditional glass and metal tower one would think of as being in a business district. He got out his smart phone and brought up a picture. “This is the building where I work.” he said and showed me an almost identical image of the building I saw in my minds eye.

Silence your inner critic. It’s not your true voice so it shouldn’t be stealing your best moments.

That picture on Krish’s phone re-confirmed that I shouldn’t be doubting my abilities and I sure as heck should never let my inner critic diminish my self confidence. I had asked his guides to provide me with a message for him and they did. It was not for me to decide whether the message made sense or not. It wasn’t my message, it was his.

Self doubt inhibits our potential and as an extension, our ability to live our best life. The ego has a purpose. It allows us to have a sense of self, to individualize ourselves so we can be autonomous from the tribe. And that is a good thing because with out our sense of self, we would not be able to strike out on our own unique path and live the life we are meant to live. But the ego also works to protect our uniqueness as an individual from potential threats. It likes to preserve the patterns that represents our life and does not differentiate a real threat over a perceived threat. Any change, even growth can be perceived by the  ego as a threat to the self.

Self doubt is a helpful tool when used to give pause, review our choices or re-affirm our decisons but self doubt left unchecked can act as a cancer to our self confidence and by extension inhibit the self actualization and growth of our soul.

My sweet friend Krish looked at me after I confirmed that the building that he works in is similar to what my mind’s eye saw and said, “Never doubt your abilities. You are an amazing person.” He didn’t doubt me, so why should I? That was a powerful lesson for me, one I hope to not forget anytime soon.

I know self doubt will rear it’s ugly head in my life again and again and I thank my ego for looking out for me. But what this little lesson and experience has taught me is to question that negative voice. Just because a thought is in my head does not necessarily make it true and to pay attention to it only serves my egos need to maintain a status quo, of which I have no doubt I never want to do.